I hope that they stand up for themselves, they had a mass shooting with a military issued rifle and that always fires up the anti's. A time of crisis is never the time to make changes in your laws. It's time for cooler heads to prevail.

Voters have thrown out a controversial initiative on restricting access to firearms in a nationwide ballot on Sunday.
Final results showed just over 56 per cent of votes had been cast against the initiative which sought to ban army-issue guns from the home.

A majority of cantons voted against the initiative. Support came from several, mainly urban regions including Geneva, Basel and Zurich. Opposition was strongest in rural areas in eastern and central Switzerland as well as in the southern Italian-speaking canton of Ticino.

The result is a blow for supporters - a broad coalition of NGOs, trade unions, churches, pacifists and centre-left parties.

WE get quite a few Swiss tourists here in Alaska. I've pulled a few outta ditches they got their campers in and had several others out the house to eat & shoot guns off the back porch bench. The ones I have met are all high class, real easy going, and have been around guns their whole lives. Last thing they need is our assistance, ha.

They tell me they never play around with their HK's; leave them stored in basement and only get them out during summer military training. I think the Swiss obey all their laws without question , I guess they have good government over there. All the ones I met were quite conservative, except one.

This Swiss guy keeps a summer home in our community, been semi resident for over 20 years, good guy too; for a lefty, ha. Once we were sitting around drinking beer and he started off (in his broken English) how Bush never considered Europe's feelings or their world view. I let him and everybody there know that I could give a hoot about what any Euro's felt about anything; I only considered what was best for America and let the rest be damned, ha it shut him up quick. But ya know, I had a stag 6.8 there that day, and I dropped the bolt, firing pin, extractor, all that junk out on picnic table and told him to put it back together, ha he did too. So I figure he had handled an AR-15 somewhere along the line.

The Swiss tell me they have all their parents & grandparents guns, kinda antiques, but they say they don't hunt nowadays, into other sports, but still have guns in their houses. One Swiss friend once told me he didn't understand all the patriotism Americans seem consumed with. He said in Europe they either don't like/trust the laws or like in Switzerland, they don't feel threatened by their government; that left me a wondering some.

I've had people from Norway, Spain, England, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Switz, even a dutch retired cop and a chinese guy that lived in New Zealand out the house shooting guns over the years. They all liked shooting guns. Even had this german girl shooting my S&W 10 inch 460 mag. First round was 200 grain hornady, after that 395 corbons that kinda set ya back. It didn't bother her and she was quite small.

Sorry to go on, but nx time around any Euro; let him shoot some of your guns, he'll like it.

Does the Swiss constitution provide any protection for their RTKBA? If their gun rights are determined by public whims and popular votes, I expect that the Swiss will be subjected to a lot of anti-gun indoctrination over the next few years - from their news/entertainment media, their schools, etc.

One Swiss friend once told me he didn't understand all the patriotism Americans seem consumed with. He said in Europe they either don't like/trust the laws or like in Switzerland, they don't feel threatened by their government; that left me a wondering some.

It might not have anything to do with it. The Euro's I have met were somewhat appalled or it was their perception that conservative Americans didn't question their own crooked Government enough in it's dealings throughout the world. They claimed after the last 100 years, Euro's were now much more critical of their leaders.

Anyway, the one Swiss guy brought his wife up our house to dig tatoes last summer. I always grow 4-5 hundred lb seed tatoes for my friends and the Indians at our local village and have thousand lb in my basement every winter. His wife looked over my shooting bench & 200 yard range off the back porch. My wife later said that her family did the same thing in Switzerland, had their own gun range.

But no joke, from what I hear from Euros, cheap handguns are available, quite illegal, and still quite commonly found. The Swiss didn't seem to feel too threatened over gun control; wish I could say the same here in the USA. One thing for sure, foreigners all like to shoot guns. That Chinese 2nd generation New Zealand guy said all they had at home were 10-22's, and he wanted to shoot every gun in the vault. He really liked all my revolvers, actually asked me to sell him some ammo, felt bad about wanting to shoot more.

Enjoyed reading what you have to say there, Zhurh... Kinda off topic (we're bad about that here), but how do you consume that many potatoes before they ruin... Is the basement that cool? Sure wish I had one.